The Accession of President Roosevelt

As soon as Mr. McKinley’s death was seen to be impending, the Vice-President and the members of the Cabinet were summoned to Buffalo. Mr. Roosevelt, on the almost positive assurances of the physicians that President McKinley was in no immediate or probable danger, had gone to the Adirondacks to bring home his wife and family from the Tahawus Club, many miles from the railway and several miles from the telephone. When mounted messengers arrived on Friday, they found that the Vice-President had undertaken a pedestrian excursion. Parties were at once sent in search, and late in the afternoon Mr. Roosevelt received the startling news not far from the top of Mount Marcy. At about five o’clock in the morning, after a ten-mile walk to the club-house, in which Mr. Roosevelt set a furious pace which outdistanced all his guides but one, and after a difficult and almost reckless ride in a storm, the Vice-President reached the railroad and was speeded at sometimes more than sixty miles an hour toward Buffalo, where he arrived early Saturday afternoon. The oath of office as President was administered to him in a private house that afternoon by Judge John R. Hazel in the presence of five members of the Cabinet. Before taking the oath of office Mr. Roosevelt made the following important and significant declaration: “I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, prosperity, and honor of our beloved country.” Following the ceremony it was announced that all the members of the Cabinet had been asked to retain office for the present, and that no special session of Congress would be called. If needed to confirm appointments, a special session of the Senate might be called without summoning the House of Representatives, but as Congress meets early in December, it is not thought that even this will be necessary. President Roosevelt’s first official act was to issue a proclamation appointing Thursday, September 19, as a day of mourning and prayer throughout the United States. Among the thousands of expressions of honor to the dead from monarchs, statesmen, and men of note the world over, none is more apt and terse than one sentence in this proclamation: “President McKinley crowned a life of largest love for his fellow-men, of most earnest endeavor for their welfare, by a death of Christian fortitude; and both the way in which he lived his life and the way in which, in the supreme hour of trial, he met his death, will remain forever a precious heritage of our people.”